French TV Crime Drama Review - Captain Marleau

Captain Marleau **** (NR) During this stay-at-home period, one of the perks has been discovering a slew of police/detective TV series dramas from about 10 European countries. Their protagonists tend to be less action-oriented and more cerebral/intuitive than ours. Most also have some sort of family baggage or tragic backstory, making them moodier and more complex. But there's one French supercop who breaks the mold in a highly entertaining manner - Corinne Masiero's Capitaine Marleau. Six episodes from her second and third seasons are now available in the US.

Tall, lanky and looking more like a forest-dwelling hobo than a cop, Marleau thrusts herself into each crime scene with the caustic wit of Dr. House, and the annoying persistence (or persistent annoyance) of Lt. Columbo. But she's always using both quite strategically. Each hour-long episode is self-contained, so it didn't matter than I hadn't seen season one, or that the new releases were from 2017 and 2019, as one can tell from various references and asides than mention recent real-world events. Many of the shows have Marleau assigned to different villages, allowing her to irritate new sets of colleagues, while unraveling a tangle of suspects and motives in solving their murder du jour.

It's Masiero's personality that makes this series stand out from the rest. The shows are generally low on overt violence and gore, and spiced up by her eccentricities. She and the show have been nominated for several awards in France. She's a refreshingly engaging character who should thrive with genre fans on this side of the Atlantic, as well. (8/24/20)